is big and so awake
by callmesandy
Summary: Peter nods. His expression is oddly blank. He says, "I'm adopted. I never really think about it. I mean, it's not important." "You never told me that," MJ says. She's not laughing at all. Because Peter definitely isn't. (Part 2 - sequel to go build yourself another home)


Title and opening quote from 'untitled' by r.e.m. no profit garnered, not mine. Thanks a! For the trope bingo square transformations.

* * *

_This world is big and so awake_

MJ laughs and pulls out her phone. "Seriously, my cousin wanted to do 23 and Me and I was like, yeah, 'Thomas Jefferson.' Clearly, white side of the family."

Peter looks at her, lightly befuddled. They are lying next to each other on his tiny bottom bunk bed. His shoulders are almost too broad for both of them to be on the bed but she's on her side so they fit for now. She says, "Thomas Jefferson? Are you unaware of Key and Peele?"

"No, I know, A A Ron, right?" Peter smiles tentatively. "Yeah, I don't get the Thomas Jefferson reference."

MJ sighs. She starts scrolling on her phone and finds the sketch. Peter starts laughing at the second 'Thomas Jefferson.' They're both giggling way too much by the end. They're very mature teenagers but they are teenagers. It's unfair to expect too much of them.

MJ rests her head on Peter's very firm shoulder, looks straight out at his neck and the rest of the room. She says, "The funny part is, unlike your normal expectations, my dad's side of the family, the black one, actually can trace on ancestor back to the 1700s in New York. A free man. With children who lived past ten. Didn't even die in the riots during the Civil War. Or any of the other riots. The rest of Dad's family is all grandparent's parent was a slave but we got that one. On my mom's side, the cousin side, both grandparents were adopted. So that's why cousin did 23 and Me. I told her, that's how you get arrested. That's how you get your DNA in the system and let them have it. You shouldn't let them have it."

"Did she find anything?" Peter reaches for her hand and they're holding hands across his chest. He has a freaky heartbeat.

MJ shrugs. "Not really. I guess we have some cousins out there who are also dumb enough to give their DNA away. And we're secretly Jewish? Sephardic, so like, Mediterranean area. I'm not getting a Bat Mitzvah or anything."

Peter nods. His expression is oddly blank. He says, "I'm adopted. I never really think about it. I mean, it's not important."

"You never told me that," MJ says. She's not laughing at all. Because Peter definitely isn't.

"No, I told you, I don't think about it. I don't have any family besides May anyway," he says.

"You could have more," MJ says. "23 and Me, right?"

"You just said I'd be stupid to put my DNA in there," Peter says. He has a small smile.

"What did they tell you, about the adoption?" She feels like this is a bad question. But she asks it anyway. His thumb is tracing little patterns on the heel of her palm. He doesn't stop doing that.

"They didn't tell me anything. My parents never told me. Ben didn't either," Peter says. "Maybe May doesn't know. I've seen my birth certificate so I know it happened the day I was born."

She wants to say how does he know. Maybe his birthday isn't even his birthday. If they didn't tell him, was something fishy? Instead she says, "If they didn't tell you, how do you know?"

"I figured it out," Peter says. His thumb makes a little mobius strip on her hand. "I'm sure you know my blood type."

"No," MJ says. "Fine, O neg."

"It's so sad I never got to donate blood," Peter says. Of course he feels bad about that.

"Maybe you could, you'd just make everyone who got a transfusion into Spidermen, too," MJ says. "Probably the healing factor would make it really helpful."

Peter sighs. "Doesn't work like that. Me and Mr. Stark tested it. He had a mild reaction, like he was almost rejecting it, but nothing else." She can feel Peter shrug.

She says, without thinking, like an asshole, "Maybe you just don't remember your parents telling you."

Peter shakes his head. "I was seven, come on, I remember my parents. I remember them." She stretches and turns, resting against Peter to full side hug. She's like naked John Lennon all over Yoko Ono which makes her think of how irritated she is when asshole men start talking about Yoko Ono. She focuses back on Peter, not that she isn't thinking about him underneath everything at pretty much all times.

Peter covers her hand with his over his chest now. He says, "I remember my mom, she would. When I had asthma attacks she would rub my back and talk to me about the mechanics of breathing and how lungs work."

She swallows and smiles. He says, "You were thinking of a bad joke about how maybe we were related? I forgive you."

"Thank you," MJ says. "So how did you know for sure?" Maybe she shouldn't, maybe she should stick with letting Peter tell goofy stories about his parents.

"I found my parents' Red Cross donor cards when I was eleven. It was pretty obvious. They had the same blood type."

"Is this a quiz? Can I figure out what blood type both your parents had that you knew you were adopted?" She sits up a little. "They were both AB positive, right?"

He smiles and then stops. "It wasn't hard." He takes a deep breath and she can feel his chest rising and falling. He says, "I remember my parents. My dad was explaining to me what death is, I remember. It was right before they died."

"That's weirdly coincidental," MJ says. She forces herself to stop talking. But she says, "And May hasn't told you? Or Ben?"

"No, no, but it's not, it doesn't bother me," he says. He's probably lying. If it was MJ, that would be a lie.

So she nods.

Peter says, "There's a million reasons they could have for not telling me. And it's just a coincidence. It was definitely not the first time my dad explained death to me. I mean, it was a hit and run car accident. They were going to bring me, I know that because Ben told me, that part I actually don't remember. But maybe it was something. I don't know, it doesn't matter."

"You're started going out in a hoodie because of your uncle dying but you don't care what happened to your parents?" She presses her lips together so she shuts up. She can't keep acting like this, like she doesn't give a shit about his feelings. She absolutely gives a shit about his feelings. She loves him.

He says, "No, it's not like that. I want to help people. I don't want them to have to suffer. It's not about vengeance or anything. They still don't know who killed Ben, they haven't caught that guy, I don't work on that. I don't have some secret board with red strings and all my guesses. It wouldn't change anything. I mean, it'd be nice if we knew and whoever was in jail, but it wouldn't change anything. Same with my parents. Maybe somebody killed them, probably not. But if they were after me, they never did anything, like after that."

"Okay," MJ says. "Okay." She snuggles closer. "That sounds right. Screw vengeance. Let's hear it for restorative justice."

Peter laughs and she can feel it in his chest.

Then he shifts and just like that, he's on top of her. He's kissing her and his thighs are pushing her legs open. If she was really mature and grown up, she'd stop him and they wouldn't, like, just have sex to stop the conversation. Which is absolutely what Peter's doing. But she likes having sex with him and she feels like she shouldn't have asked so many questions.

She's nearly seventeen and she really loves him. She closes her eyes and wraps her arms around his neck. Peter's very quiet, that's not normal, but it's not bad. He kisses her and then he kisses her neck and collarbone. She can feel how much he wants her. Not just because he's already hard. She arches her back into him. He gets her underwear off and her shirt pushed up to her neck. He's simply balanced on one arm and his knees which seems effortless and probably is. He cups her breast and then runs his hand down between her legs. He says "MJ," really low and her toes curl.

She mumbles "condom" and he nods. He reaches somewhere and then she grabs his hair as she feels him enter her. She says, "Peter" a few times, she thinks.

She really enjoys having sex with him. He comes and then slips off her. He disappears to the bathroom and gets back in bed with her. He goes down on her and she comes really quickly. She really loves him.

MJ gets back in bed with him, pulling her underwear back on. Peter says, "You could stay."

It's such a bad idea. She can't do it. But he's already got his arms around her and she upset him. She kisses his cheek and closes her eyes again.

He wakes up three different times and thankfully falls right back asleep. The fourth time, she grabs his arm and says, "It's four thirty, I should get home."

"You wan' me take you?" He mumbles.

"I think I got it," MJ says.

She sneaks into her bedroom and changes into her pajamas. Maybe she'll get away with it.

MJ gets up at 6:30 am, early for her on Saturday. Her sister walks by when MJ opens her bedroom door. Her sister says, "You think I didn't notice you were out all night? You were always trash."

MJ feels dull and small. The room rushes away and there's nothing but her standing there, alone and useless.

Xxx

Peter waits for a while after he gets up, stares out the window at nothing. He's waiting to hear May moving around, getting ready. Then she's awake and he's just waiting to get his nerve up.

He smells oatmeal and finally moves. He grabs his phone as he gets up, scanning through his email and texts from Ned, mostly, skim twitter and then just opening and closing a bunch of apps. He's still looking at his phone when he sits down for breakfast. "May," he says. "I actually have, like, a question for you."

She looks up from her phone and says, "Fire away."

He tries to frame it, to say it exactly and he ends up with "Um, so, umm, I know I'm, uh, adopted -"

May's eyes widens and she gets up from the table. She comes around and hugs him. She says, "Oh, Peter, I'm so sorry. We were going to tell you, Ben was going to tell you. I'm sorry."

"Okay," he says. "Okay." He hugs her closer. May knows, so it's good. It's not bad, it's not a bad secret.

"I think your parents were waiting to tell you, I don't know, maybe when you were just a little older. Mary mentioned it to me," May says. She sits back down in her seat but she's gripping his shoulder. "Of course, when I married Ben, you were already there. Adorable toddler. You were very cute. Ben wanted to tell you when you were sixteen and I told him we should do it sooner, it's such a silly thing to wait on telling you. And then I just, there was so much else, you know?"

Peter eats his oatmeal. "So why not just tell me? At, like, any point before now."

May shrugs. "Like I said, Ben wanted to wait. And when he died, it wasn't, honestly, I forgot. I forget sometimes. I know that sounds awful, you found out and now you're probably thinking it's some dark awful thing. It's not. You weren't kidnapped. Mary and Richard, it was a private adoption, I know that, and they took you home from the hospital. I think Ben felt bad that we didn't know anything. We don't have documents but everything is on the up and up. I swear."

"That's good," Peter says. "I was just wondering. I should have said something when I figured it out."

"It's okay," May says. "Maybe I'll see what I can find."

Peter nods. "You don't have to do that right away."

She doesn't but it's okay. He feels much better.

He walks slash jogs over to MJ's place. He knocks on her door and her sister answers. She gives Peter her usual contemptuous look. Peter says, "Hey."

MJ comes around the corner and says, "I've got it, obviously."

Her sister says to MJ, "You planning on coming home?"

"Maybe I won't," MJ says, her voice hard. "Is that what you want?"

Her sister shakes her head and walks away. Peter quietly says, "Is everything okay?"

"It's fine," MJ says. "Fine enough. Whatever."

He takes her hand as they walk towards the library. MJ talks a lot about the greatness of libraries but she also hates checking things out because it leaves a record. "The librarians don't want to, but the overwhelming hand of authority is stronger than a few good public servants," she said, more than once.

He says, "Are you sure it's okay?"

"I can't deal with her anymore, I'm done. She can think of me however she wants," MJ says. "I also don't want to talk about it."

"Got it," Peter says. "So, I talked to May this morning and she totally knew about the adoption."

"Of course she did," MJ says. She probably didn't think May did, so it's sweet of her to be so confident now. "I mean it," MJ says. "Don't be so cynical. No way your family wasn't just waiting to tell you. I know the Parkers." She kisses his cheek.

"Got it," Peter says. "Anyway, it's not important."

"You've said that," MJ says. "All that matters is the family we have and all that."

"Yeah," Peter says, smiling. "Exactly."


End file.
